Epigraph. Note: "This epigraph, which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the Maxims of the first edition, 1665; it is omitted from the second and third, and reappears for the first time in the fourth edition at the head of the Reflections". Aime Martin, editor, Bartlett's Quotations, 1919 edition.

What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

Variant translation: The passions are the only orators who always persuade. They are like a natural art, of which the rules are unfailing; and the simplest man who has passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent man who has none.

In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors.

Variant translation: In all professions, each affects a part and an appearance to make him seem as he would wish to be believed. And so it is that one can say that the world is made only of appearances.

We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us.

Maxim 347. Compare: "'That was excellently observed,' say I when I read a passage in another where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, then I pronounce him to be mistaken." Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects.

There is a certain dignity of manner independent of fortune, a certain distinctive air which seems to mark us out for great things. It is a value we set upon ourselves without realizing it, and by means of this quality we claim other men’s deference as our due. This does more to set us above them than birth, honors, and merit itself.

The Maxims were published in several editions during La Rochefoucauld's lifetime. Later editions also include: 1) the Maximes supprimées, which were maxims printed in earlier editions but eventually removed by the author; 2) other maxims which had been found in manuscript form (the Manuscrit de Liancourt); and 3) a series of essays known as Réflexions diverses.

This is no time to be getting all steamed up about La Rochefoucauld. It's only a question of minutes before I'm going to be pretty darned good and sick of La Rochefoucauld, once and for all. La Rochefoucauld this and La Rochefoucauld that. Yes, well, let me tell you that if nobody had ever learned to quote, very few people would be in love with La Rochefoucauld. I bet you I don't know ten souls who read him without a middleman.

Dorothy Parker short story The Little Hours published in Here Lies (1939), the narrator during insomnia dwelling on La Rochefoucauld's pronouncement that if nobody learned to read, very few people would be in love.